Leon Trotsky: The Transitional
programme

The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the
Fourth International

The Objective Prerequisites for a
Socialist Revolution

The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a
historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.

The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in
general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under
capitalism. Mankind's productive forces stagnate. Already new inventions and
improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth. Conjunctural crises
under the conditions of the social crisis of the whole capitalist system inflict
ever heavier deprivations and sufferings upon the masses. Growing unemployment,
in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the state and undermines the
unstable monetary systems. Democratic regimes, as well as fascist, stagger on
from one bankruptcy to another.

The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out. In countries where it has already
been forced to stake its last upon the card of fascism, it now toboggans with
closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe. In the historically
privileged countries, i.e., in those where the bourgeoisie can still for a
certain period permit itself the luxury of democracy at the expense of national
accumulations (Great Britain, France, United States, etc.), all of capital's
traditional parties are in a state of perplexity bordering on a paralysis of
will.

The "New Deal," despite its first period of pretentious
resoluteness, represents but a special form of political perplexity, possible
only in a country where the bourgeoisie succeeded in accumulating incalculable
wealth. The present crisis, far from having run its full course, has already
succeeded in showing that "New Deal" politics, like Popular Front
politics in France, opens no new exit from the economic blind alley.

International relations present no better picture. Under the increasing
tension of capitalist disintegration, imperialist antagonisms reach an impasse
at the height of which separate clashes and bloody local disturbances (Ethiopia,
Spain, the Far East, Central Europe) must inevitably coalesce into a
conflagration of world dimensions. The bourgeoisie, of course, is aware of the
mortal danger to its domination represented by a new war. But that class is now
immeasurably less capable of averting war than on the eve of 1914.

All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet
"ripened" for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious
deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not
only "ripened"; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a
socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe
threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat,
i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is
reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.